The invention relates to a fitting for mounting the drawer-face front end of the runner of a drawer slide. Such a fitting has a runner clip which can be fastened behind the drawer facing, underneath the drawer bottom, in the front corner area, and the runner clip has two legs which grip the opposite side surfaces of the runner in the manner of a clip.
Hardware fittings of this kind, which hold the front end of the runner of a drawer slide between the legs of a runner clip fixedly fastened to the drawer have the advantage that the runner can easily be snapped out of the clip in case of necessity, and on the other hand it can easily be introduced again into the clip. For this purpose the legs of the clip can be provided with ear-like projections having ramps to facilitate the insertion of the front end of the runner. Fittings of this kind are therefore also preferred for fastening the front ends of tubular runners to the bottoms of drawers. As long as the drawers are provided with front facings superimposed separately on the front wall of the drawer, and these facings are adjustable relative to the front wall for alignment with the facings of adjacent drawers and/or the cabinet side walls or even the top of the cabinet, there is no difficulty in aligning the facings of the drawers such that, when the drawers are closed, they will be in an aesthetically satisfactory precise alignment with one another and with the cabinet walls. In recent times, however, the providing of separate drawer facings on drawer fronts has been abandoned, since the front itself is the facing. Any adjustment relative to the drawer is then, of course, no longer possible. Inaccuracies in the assembly of the drawer slides, or also any racking of the cabinet carcase or of the drawers, are then manifested by a misalignment of the drawer front, which is now simultaneously the facing, relative to adjacent drawers or to the cabinet walls, which results in an unattractive appearance when, for example, the gap between drawers situated one above the other varies in width. In the most unfavorable case such racking can even cause the facings of adjacent drawers to overlap, and then one of the two drawers can no longer be closed all the way.
It is therefore the aim of the invention to create a fitting for mounting the front end of the runners of drawer slides, which will permit a shifting of the position of the front end of the runners relative to the corresponding drawer, and thus to the drawer facing, in the vertical direction, and preferably also in the transverse direction, and thus make it possible to align drawer fronts with one another and with the carcase walls.
Setting out from a hardware fitting of the kind described above, this aim is achieved according to the invention by the fact that the runner holding clip is integral with a corner body which in turn is integral with a mounting arm which can be fastened to the inside face of the drawer front; that the area of the junction between the runner holding clip and the corner body and/or the area of the junction between the corner body and the mounting arm are made resiliently deformable, and that in the corner body a perpendicular threaded bore is provided through which the threaded shaft of an adjusting screw can be driven whose free end is pressed against the underside of the drawer bottom. By turning the adjusting screw in or out of the threaded bore, the corner body can be forced away from or let come closer to the bottom of the drawer in the vertical direction. This permits an adjustment of the drawer as a whole and thus also of its front relative to the drawer slide. Thus, it is also possible to perform an alignment of the drawer front in a precisely horizontal position by an adjustment of a fitting on only one side of the drawer, or a contrary adjustment of the fittings holding the runners on the drawer. The resiliently deformable configuration of the junction between the corner body and the mounting arm prevents any twisting of the runner due to the adjusting procedure, which otherwise could make the drawer slide difficult to operate.
In a preferred embodiment of the invention, the free end of an adjusting screw driven through a threaded bore in the drawer sidewall can be brought into engagement with the clip leg pressing against the side of the runner facing the drawer sidewall. By driving this adjusting screw in or out, the runner holding clip can be adjusted with resilient flexing at the junctions relative to the drawer sidewall, and thus transversely of its front wall. The adjusting screw driven through the drawer sidewall therefore permits the desired transverse alignment of the drawer front.
In the surface of the clip leg facing the drawer sidewall it is desirable to provide a vertically disposed, groove-like recess with a closed bottom, which is engaged by the free front end of the adjusting screw. The adjusting screw therefore presses against the bottom of this groove-like recess, while deflection of the clip leg and hence of the holding head at right angles to the vertical, groove-like recess is prevented by the engagement of the free front end of the adjusting screw.
At its bottom end the groove-like recess is preferably stopped, so that this stopped end forms an abutment which can engage the free front end of the adjusting screw engaged in the groove in the case of a change in the vertical level, in order thus to limit the adjustment in the vertical direction by means of the adjusting screw passing through the corner body.
The fitting is preferably made entirely from a resiliently flexible plastic, the area where the runner clip joins the corner body and the area where the corner body joins the mounting arm are made flexible by reducing the material thickness in these areas.